Racing: Five face doping charges

THE LONG-RUNNING police investigation into race-fixing, which began two years ago after the doping of two odds-on favourites, at last produced charges yesterday when five men were accused of conspiracy to defraud bookmakers and others through "interference with the fair running of horses by administration of a performance-inhibiting drug". None of the five, Ray Butler, Adam Hodgson, Jason Moore, John Matthews and Glen Gill, are licensed trainers or jockeys.

Along with the five charged, three jockeys answered bail at Charing Cross police station in London yesterday. Graham Bradley, winner of the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup on Bregawn, was re-bailed to return to Charing Cross next month, while Dean Gallagher and Ray Cochrane, who won the 1988 Derby on Kahyasi, were released without charge.

Fellow jockey Jamie Osborne, who was arrested on 27 January, 1998, along with Gallagher but cleared nine months later, said of the release of his weighing-room colleague: "I'm delighted for Dean. I know how difficult it was for me. It must be a huge weight off Dean's shoulders that, quite rightly, he has been cleared."